Robert A. Wlodarczyk's Blog (MSFT) : General Rants

Networking

RWlodarczyk — Thu, 16 Oct 2003 06:34:00 GMT

Chris Sells talks about some good methods for networking :)

Rules for life

RWlodarczyk — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 04:10:00 GMT

Stephen Forte talks of his life lessons from Mt. Everest. Definitely 100% true, rules to live by.

Half Life 2 Source Code Leaked

RWlodarczyk — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 05:50:00 GMT

Man, this is a disaster. Half Life 2 forums is reporting (and as been confirmed by a PM at Valve) that the SOURCE CODE (yes you read right!) to Half Life 2 has been leaked out.

What this means... the whole new engine for Half Lilfe 2 that so many people have been waiting for is compromised. The whole release of the game is compromised. Horrible.

A sad day for all software companies out there...

So, Valve is asking for everyone's help... if you know anything about this, please email them at helpvalve@valvesoftware.com.

Stephen Forte speaks...

RWlodarczyk — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 05:41:00 GMT

Looks like Stephen Forte is back around sea-level... he blogs again!

Lunch with Steve from FurryGoat

RWlodarczyk — Tue, 23 Sep 2003 19:56:00 GMT

Today I met up with Steve from www.furrygoat.com. We had a great lunch on campus and chatted about a variety of things. Great, cool guy! I was telling him that his blog was the first one that I started to read religiously and how probably I was one of the few who still read his blog using IE instead of an aggregator since I didn't switch to RSS Bandit until May or so. I was happy to meet him face-to-face here! Definitely will need to arrange other lunch(es) too.

No email for you!

RWlodarczyk — Fri, 19 Sep 2003 21:00:00 GMT

A company based in the UK, Phones4U, is banning all email sent within the company amongst its 2500 or so employees. This is in an effort to get colleagues to get up away from their computers and interacting on a 1:1 basis more often. This is an interesting concept, but I don't know how long it will last for. I can't imaine how my life, both at work and home, would be without any email.

Intel ROCKS!

RWlodarczyk — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 02:04:00 GMT

I've always liked Intel over AMD, and I think today I see yet another reason why this is the case. I always felt that Intel is more of an innovator than is AMD (well, the only exception may be with AMD's Opteron (aka AMD64)). Intel has proved time and time again some brilliant engineering. Once example of this is their Hyper-Threading. This is a fantastic piece of engineering that is quite amazing.

Today Intel has done it again... They demoed their new Vanderpool chips. From the sounds of it, they seriously ROCK! What you can do with these processor is actually partition them into individual units. From the sounds of it, you can parition the processor to do one thing while the other partition(s) are doing something completely unrelated. It seems like having 2 PCs in one (then again, this is all early information, so, this may be totally inaccurate!).

In any case, here is the reference.

Developers 37 times!!!

RWlodarczyk — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 07:23:00 GMT

Don Box points to this very funny PDC spoof video. Go check it out.

New Books I'm Looking Forward To

RWlodarczyk — Fri, 12 Sep 2003 04:34:00 GMT

From aPress (links and text copied from aPress' Forthcoming Titles list):

Developing on Linux with C# and .NET: The Mono Project
By Daniel Solin
ISBN: 1-59059-117-8, 200 pages
The Mono Project is a complete implementation of Microsoft’s .NET technology in open source code. Developing on Linux with C# and .NET: The Mono Project gets you up to speed fast on this exciting technology and tells you everything you need to know to start developing today.
[More Information]

This should be interesing to read and see what the author says about developing .NET apps on Linux. Nice to see that there is some traction with the Mono project to the point of having aPress publish a book on it.

Maximizing .NET Performance
By Nicholas J. Wienholt
ISBN: 1-59059-141-0, 200 pages
Maximizing .NET Performance focuses on providing developers and architects with the systematic analysis of performance relating to key Framework topics like remoting, garbage collection, and threading. Rather than a ‘tips and tricks’ approach, the book aims to provide a detailed exploration of each topic, and explore the ‘whys’ and ‘by how much’ aspects of performance that are often overlooked.
[More Information]

Performance is one of my things. I love doing perf. testing and optimization of code. This book should be a ncie book to cover the techniques of doing this well with .NET and getting the most out of your .NET apps.

Web Services Security in the .NET Platform
By Peter Bromberg, Brian Nantz
ISBN: 1-59059-115-1, 450 pages
Web Services Security in the .NET Platform will be the comprehensive treatment on how to secure Web Services on the .NET Platform. Any company using .NET will eventually (if they haven’t already) be exposing part of their functionality as a .NET Web service and, given the times we live in, securing these features will become job number one.
[More Information]

Another topic that I'm interested in... Should be interesting to see if the book covers WSE at all (it should).

Build Your Own .NET Language and Compiler
By Edward G. Nilges
ISBN: 1-59059-134-8, 600 pages
Virtually every experienced programmer today started out with some version of Basic or QuickBasic and has at some point in his or her career wondered how it worked. Build Your Own .NET Language and Compiler will teach language construction and design to .NET programmers, using a fully functioning “QuickBasic” compatible compiler as the example.
[More Information]

Just a fun book in general. Hey, maybe I'll go and create Rob#. Or as my MSN Messenger by-line says: [tiësto#.net]!!! (fo those who are like, huh?, DJ Tiësto is by far the BEST DJ in the world and he's awesome!)

Code Generation in Microsoft .NET
By Kathleen Dollard
ISBN: 1-59059-137-2, 456 pages
Code Generation in Microsoft .NET teaches how to implement automatic code generation – a significant new trend in enterprise software development to reduce costs and improve efficiency and reliability.
[More Information]

Should hopefully be a nice “under-the-covers“ style book. Always good to learn about how stuff actually works.

A view from the [dark] side...

RWlodarczyk — Wed, 03 Sep 2003 04:06:00 GMT

Scoble points out a recent interview with Jonathan Swartz of Sun Microsystems. It's interesting to see how the other side sees Microsoft and Microsoft technologies. Especially coming from a company that is losing out more severely to Linux than is Microsoft...

Fry's eXPerience

RWlodarczyk — Sun, 31 Aug 2003 07:03:00 GMT

I apologize for the non-.NET post, but it's about Fry's... a geek's heaven.

Today I decided to see what all this fuss about Fry's is. I've heard and read many things about Fry's Electronics stores from countless people. To me, being a displaced New Yorker (and still a New Yorker in spirit) I felt that this Fry's thing was a bit over exaggerated and more of a West Coast “thing”. So, I figured that I should see first hand what Fry's is all about.

Let me prelude this post by saying that since I'm from New York, we like BIG things. Tall buildings, crowds... everything big! At least that's how I feel. Also, let me add this that the largest store on Long Island that I've been too must have been either of the few Costcos around Smithtown or Best Buy. So, fairly large stores, but I'm in for a surpirse...

Low and behold I get off I-405 and nearly immediately I saw the Fry's store. Mind you, this store is located in Renton next to one of the Boeing plants. So, there's alot of large buildings around. First impressions... Fry's fit in perfectly there! The store is massive. And the parking lot is even more massive. After quickly finding parking and walking to the entrance of the store, I entered into the store. My eyes lit up as if I was a kid walking into a candy shop. Man, this store was MASSIVE!!! I immediately thought to myself, this is like 2 or 3 Best Buys all in one huge store. Seriously, I'm not exaggerating here. There were tons and tons of people, and hundreds of employees suited up in their suits. I slowly made my way through the store and found that there is in fact a TON of stuff there. Motherboard, electronics components, computer components, stereos, TVs, books, games, DVDs, appliances, phones, office supplies, music... pretty much everything imaginable was there. Simply put, the store is INSANE and TOTALLY AWESOME!

They had some rpetty good deals there... I got the Godfather DVD box set for $30 (normally $60; and ~$60 on the web), an iron for $3 (one of the hundreds of sale items), and some cables. They ran out of the Component Video HDTV XBOX cable pack I was looking for, so I had to head over to Best Buy afterwards anyway, but still, it was an amazing experience. Heck, I may head over there tomorrow again just to see what other things I may “need”. :)

Oh and I forgot to mention, yes there's a restaurant in the middle of the store too, so if you get hungry while shopping you can eat.

Overall, YES Fry's lives up to everything that I've heard from those countless other people. Thank you!!!

UPDATE: I found this map of the Fry's in Renton (which is given to you when you enter the store).

Ever wonder why you can't...

RWlodarczyk — Sun, 24 Aug 2003 19:57:00 GMT

click on the map to change your time zone in Windows anymore... Raymond Chen has a great explaination here.

CF.NET Development vs. Java/Symbian/etc...

RWlodarczyk — Sun, 24 Aug 2003 19:17:00 GMT

Brian Jepson points to a great link talking about how much development for the Compact .NET Framework rocks (compared to developing Java solutions for mobile platforms).

I had this discussion (CF vs Java Mobile development) with a die-hard Java developer who happens to develop for the Motorola phones a few months ago. He, of course, hadn't ever looked at .NET or even knew that there was a CF for mobile devices. Never-the-less, I figures I'd talk to him to see what his reaction is to the CF. He said that all mobile Java development was “standard” as long as it adhered to the J2ME “standard”. (Notice I quote the “statndard” since Java isn't a real standard as is C# and the CLI [meaning ISO and ECMA standards]). I claimed to him that even if you managed to develop an app for a Motorola phone and then tried porting it to an older Motorola Phone (Java enabled) then you'd have issues for it to work. And nevermind porting it to Nokia, etc. I don't think he saw the point in the discussion at this stage sicne he still claimed that “Java is the savior for all developers, and anything Microsoft is pure evil”.

But to this I stand... development for .NET -- whether it be for XML Web Services, mobile applications for the CF, Windows Forms applications, etc -- is still far easier than for any other technology out there. The link that Brian talks about is just an example for mobile applications. Also, if I write something for a PocketPC 2003 (with CF) and then want to port to PocketPC 2002 or 2000, as long as it has the CF installed, it'll run. No questions asked. Doesn't matter if I have an iPaq or a Jornada or new Toshiba PocketPC... as long as I have the CF on there, it'll work.

Account Permissions...

RWlodarczyk — Thu, 21 Aug 2003 04:14:00 GMT

...take a while for them to propogate throughout Active Directory, especially quite a large one at that. I've been reading various docs theswe past few days and had a few meetings with my manager and teammates. Definitely cool stuff :)

Will write more soon...

The famous disclaimer

RWlodarczyk — Tue, 19 Aug 2003 04:51:00 GMT

I should of posted this first probably... Need to do my rendition of the standard disclaimer. This is something the Surgeon General of the US recommends to put on all blogs that are written by employees of any corporation... oh wait, since when is blogging bad for your health? Anyway, here's my rendidition of my disclaimer, I hope Microsoft Legal likes it.

I'm currently an employee of Microsoft. My blog is mine. The opinions represented in this blog are mine as well and may not represent my employer's opinions. I have not been brainwashed by anyone to write praises about Microsoft or Microsoft technologies, I'm just writing about the technology that I love. All of my posts will include information that is public knowledge, so don't look to me to get internal information about any future Microsoft product.